Wednesday 23 December 2009
Only once did I purposely buy a recording of Alban Berg's violin concerto, and that was in the early 1980s (Kyung-Wha Chung) when I was curious to hear the work. I listened to it several times, with complete incomprehension, and the LP later ended up in a landfill site somewhere. Since then I have had the misfortune to acquire NINE further recordings of this tuneless, themeless, melody-less, meandering concerto. The latest was yesterday evening, when Arabella Steinbacher had a renewed go at convincing me. I listened and listened ... and still hate the piece. There are so many better violin concertos written in the twentieth century (not least the under-appreciated one by Benjamin Britten). Ms Steinbacher has the Berg concerto as a filler to the Beethoven, which I shall listen to with much more interest, since she is a fine violinist. As for Berg: Bah!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Because it's not a "violin" concerto.
It can be defined as anything, but not a violin concerto. It's music for orchestra with a violin obligatto. and a very boring music. I've the first by Krasner-Webern, and I couldn't stand it.
A friend of mine remarked: "The Schönberg violin concerto is even worse!" Both Berg and Schönberg could have taken lessons from their contemporary, Erich Korngold, when it came to writing violin concertos.
Or Richard Strauss
I will be playing the Berg in my Carnegie Hall debut - that is only the first 8 notes = GDAE, EADG. Hahaha - the easiest VC on the planet!
I think Berg stole the opening GDAE motif from a time he heard an orchestra tuning up; it just doesn't sound original. The only other recognisable bit is the Bach chorale in the finale ... and that is hardly original, either.
Post a Comment